Native American Literature
By
Major Themes
Sunnie Vitale
Hunter Irvin
Karina Moore
Tyler Brady
Symbol
- Cherokee: Stories explaining how they came to have certain healing methods, and stories about the animals that inhabited their lands
- Lumbee: Legends about animals, origins, and natural phenomenons.
- Occaneechi: Taught life lessons to kids.
- The Native American children were very important in this time period. Stories were told to them in order to teach them the difference between right and wrong. The older generations heavily relied upon the children to pass down the stories to future generations and continue the traditions.
What Made the Era Unique?
- Storytelling was used as an educational tool among the Native American people. Stories were passed down by word of mouth instead of being written.
Historical Events
Sources
- Indian Removal Act of 1830: George Washington promised to respect Indian rights and their lands. By 1840, they had been removed and relocated to lands west of the Mississippi River
- Trail of Tears 1838: Indians were forced to move westward to new lands, located in present day Oklahoma. 4,000/16,000 died on the trail.
- www.ibiblio.org/storytelling
- www9.georgtown.edu
- http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/19796/Native-American-literature
- http://nativeamericanwriters.com/
Native American Literature
Why are there so few known authors to come out of this era?
The traditional oral and written literature of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. These include ancient hieroglyphic writings of Middle America, as well as an extensive set of folktales, myths, and oral histories that were transmitted for centuries by storytellers, and live on the works of many contemporary American Indian writers.
- Their names were not recovered from the time period that the stories were created because the stories were passed down by word of mouth and were never actually written down.
What was the relationship to other literary eras?
- The Native American literature was influenced by nature and the supernatural; Native Americans had a heavy belief in spirits, gods, talismans, etc. They also believed everything on Earth was a gift from their god and should be treated as a privilege. They believed people come from the Earth and return to it in death, which is a noticeable theme in many stories.
- Native American literature has also had a profound effect on American literature, many of the first "American" stories came from a mix of Native American cultures as well as other countries.
Storytelling Rituals
- Cherokee: The Cherokee people only told their stories to fellow Indian people. Before they told their stories they would report to the "medicine man" where he would perform a scratching ceremony on them. They would then listen to the stories in a small Earth-covered hut. The stories lasted all through the night and into the next morning.
- Lumbee & Occaneechi: Tribes did not have sacred rituals they would perform before storytelling.